


Awakening

by the_moonmoth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Outdoor Sex, Restraints, Rough Sex, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:20:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 10,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the fourth month since Sansa's awakening, and her need is growing stronger. (A 'sex or die' scenario.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my own prompt on the comment fic meme on sansa_sandor.livejournal.com It was supposed to be a short little snippet to get it out of my head, but then my hindbrain took over... My thanks to Yavannie for Introducing me to the beautiful artwork of John Bauer, depicted below. This fic is unbeta'd, but constructive crit is welcome, as ever.
> 
> Warnings for sex magic and dubious-consent.

 

****

 

A moan rises from the bed and Sandor resists the urge to turn and look. He stares instead at the scroll he took from Winterfell's library earlier in the week in preparation for this, and tries to make sense of the words. He is beginning a paragraph for the third time when she moans again, and knows he is none the wiser as to its content.   
  
She isn't awake at least, not yet, though she isn't really asleep either. He hears the rustle of the bed covers as her limbs twitch periodically, running with her pack in the moonlight.  _Unnatural beasts,_  he thinks sourly for the hundredth time,  _damn them to the deepest of the seven hells._  He regrets the day Nymeria ever birthed her pups, regrets reuniting the Stark girls at all if it comes to that. Regrets that he never took his dirk to the pup's scrawny little neck, the one surviving beast of the whole litter, which Arya had gifted to Sansa... Jonquil, she calls it, though the creature, now full grown, stands as tall as she.  
  
And now his lady lies tied to his bed, restrained by her own request, motivated by a queer mix of humiliation and trust. That the Starks have an unnatural bond with their monstrous pets has been rumoured since the Lannisters began losing to King Robb during the war. Sandor is not a credulous man, but even he could not deny the truth of it, after a while. Given how closely he watches Sansa. As the pup grew and matured, something changed in her too. He had seen it in the flash of her eyes long before... this.  
  
Outside he can hear the distant howling of wolves, and Sansa moans a third time, a high, mewling sound that runs molten tendrils through Sandor. His hands clench on the scroll, wrinkling the centuries-old manuscript. When she is like this she says that she can smell him, but he can smell her too, the heated scent of her sweat and arousal. Perhaps the gods exist after all, and this is punishment for his sins. He remembers a conversation from long ago, atop the battlements of Maegor's holdfast, when he had laughed in the face of a little girl’s faith and believed he held all the power.  _Damn me for a fool._    
  
This is the fourth month since Sansa's awakening, and her need is growing stronger.


	2. Chapter 2

 

The first time it had happened, he had thought it some cruel jape, that she should come to his chamber in the dead of night in nothing but her fine bedshift, and reach so tentatively for him. It was the image of half a hundred dreams made real, the bend of her slender neck as she stroked up his bare arm from wrist to shoulder. His skin had drawn into gooseflesh at that slightest of touches, enough to shake him out of the entrancement and step back out of her reach.  
  
He remembers she had not liked to be denied. He prefers not to remember what came next – he knows dwelling on that could end him – only that he had been forced to bind her wrists and ankles and carry her back to her room, locking her in before standing guard at her door and listening as she wailed piteously for him to come to her.  
  
The following afternoon, drawn and ill-looking, she had called for him to attend her. He had sent for the maester himself as the sun rose, but was met by the sister instead, scowling at him with more than her usual disgust for his existence, before wordlessly leaving the room. He had not slept since Sansa had woken him, and was exhausted – that was not the only reason his brain could not keep up with what she was, haltingly, attempting to tell him.  
  
He has never before or since seen her look so uncomfortable, so humiliated, despite everything they have lived through together. Before, he had cherished a thought – a painful, vulnerable little hope – that she might one day come to feel some fraction of the beating, clawing love he felt for her. But as she spoke that afternoon, her face turned away from his in shame, and described to him what Arya had told her about the demands her body now held over her, he had felt himself turn to stone.


	3. Chapter 3

He cannot leave the room, this they established the second time it happened. The awakening brings her strength far beyond what is natural for her, and she broke free of her bonds and came to him anyway. No one else knows but Arya, who comes and goes from Winterfell as she feels and is considered half-wild by the northern lords anyway. Sansa asked that it would not be known beyond the two of them, even though she can remember the things she says to him when she wakes from her fevered haze. That is the most excruciating part for them both –  _that she can remember._  
  
He should feel pleased for the trust she shows in him, that he will stay with her through the long night as she tries to entice him, yet leave her unmolested. He does not. This is a battle he is ill-equipped for, needing not a sword but self-restraint.

There was once a time when he would have yielded without any further thought. Even after Elder Brother got his hands on him, he thinks he would have. He left the Quiet Isle calmer, his thirst for drowning himself in wine dried up, but still not a good man. It was the little bird who awakened those instincts, and it had been worth it, for the increasing familiarity, the shy smiles and gentle touches. All that has stopped, since her awakening.

She says it feels as though she is going mad with the need to mate, but if so she is taking him with her. He realises the scroll is forgotten and that he has spent the past few minutes listening acutely to her panting breath. He sits with his back to her, but nothing can block the sound or the scent of her.   
  
He is hard, but his whole body aches with it. He remembers the look she gave him earlier as he restrained her wrists to his bedhead, blue eyes wide with something she couldn't bring herself to say. She had wound her fingers through his somehow, and leaned up almost imperceptibly so that he had thought for several long heartbeats to kiss her. He had not, and tightened her restraint, and stepped away.  _It's starting,_  he had told himself, even though night had not yet fallen.   
  
Now it is pitch black beyond the shutters, and she has been moaning and murmuring his name on and off for some hours now. The temptation to touch himself and relieve some pressure before she wakes fully is overwhelming. Even stone can melt under fierce heat, and he fears for his resolve.   
  
Outside, a lone wolf howls, a deep, haunting sound that hangs in the still air. There is more rustling from the bed as she twitches, then stills.

The hairs rise on the back of Sandor's neck. She is awake.


	4. Chapter 4

In the end it is the silence that makes him turn, his warrior's instincts on high alert as her eyes burn into the back of his neck. She lies in the centre of his bed, where he put her, arms pulled up above her head. Her slim body is covered in sweat, her bedshift stuck to her like a second skin. Before he can stop himself he has risen, outlining the curve of her teats and hips with his eyes as he moves to her bedside, lingering on the darker patches of hard nipples and maiden's hair before tearing his gaze away.  
  
"You look hungry," Sansa murmurs, watching him with fever-bright eyes. "I know where you might feast."  
  
Sandor is clenching his teeth so hard a muscle in his jaw starts to jump. Her eyes shift to it with interest, and he forces himself to ask, "You want something to drink?" He has wine and milk of the poppy, but they have trod that road before and found it to lead nowhere. She is too strong when she is like this.  
  
She shakes her head, turning her face away. "Hot," she whispers, legs moving restlessly. She's right – Sandor can feel it rising off her supine form, far worse than the last three times. Stiffly, he reaches for the washcloth and bends to lay it across her forehead. She lets out a long hissing breath – relief, discomfort or frustration that the cloth separates his hand from her skin, he cannot tell. But he can feel that she is burning up.  
  
"Let me call the maester.”

She shakes her head again, as he knew she would. For a moment, he considers doing it anyway, shot through with new fear for her safety.  
  
"You know what I need." She looks him straight in the face when she says it, pleading, which makes it all the worse. "I need you. I feel like I'm coming out of my skin. Sandor, please."  
  
Sandor backs away quickly from the rising temptation. He knows she will regret saying these things in the morning – knows it, but must remind himself of it again and again. No one has ever wanted him before, and it is the cruellest jape of all, that the woman he would walk through fire for only wants him one night of every month, when temporarily relieved of her senses.  
  
"You'll thank me in the morning," he grits out, said as much for his own ears as hers.  
  
"You don't understand," she growls, showing him her teeth for a moment before turning away. More softly, she adds, "You don't even try."  
  
Absurdly, this injustice stings more deeply than any other. The words rise angrily in the back of his throat before he reigns himself in. There is no point in arguing with her, she cannot help what’s coming out of her mouth, and he will more than likely only say something he regrets.  
  
"You'll thank me in the morning," he says again, and this time, she is quiet.


	5. Chapter 5

The nights are long in the Northern spring, though, and there are too many hours between now and dawn. Sandor seats himself once more and attempts to regain his focus on the scroll, but it is nigh on impossible when Sansa cannot remain still from one moment to the next, tossing and turning as far as the restraints will allow. And her annoyance with him is ever outweighed by her need.  
  
"Do you remember that kiss?" she asks dreamily after what feels like an hour, but might only be a few minutes. "The one we shared on my first awakening. What a sweet kiss that was." Sandor remembers it well, seared indelibly onto his bones. He had been surprised by her unusual strength, caught unawares, had allowed her to push him to the bed. He does not – he cannot – think of it without aching for her. And so he does not think of it at all. But sensing weakness, she will not let it go. "Did you know I had such passion within me? That my lips would feel so good pressed to yours? I have a thousand such kisses I would give to you, Sandor." He suppresses a shiver at the sound of his name. "Won't you kiss me again?"  
  
Without realising how it has happened, he finds himself on his feet once more. He feels drawn to her like a physical force, a loadstone seeking north. Desperate, he reaches out for the bedpost, hand clasping the polished wood at the foot of the bed, safe anchorage. She is watching him with lazy eyes, colour high in her cheeks, skin sheened with sweat. He tries to take a deep steadying breath and she watches the rise and fall of his chest before her eyes fall closed and her whole body seems to be wracked by a wave of... he does not know, but she groans low in her throat, her spine arching off the bed, legs moving restlessly against each other.  
  
"Sansa?" he asks, stomach clenching with worry.  
  
"This is unbearable," she whimpers, eyes still closed. "Please Sandor,  _please_." When she opens her eyes, he sees a fragment of his little bird looking back, the woman she is when she isn't like this, desperation and trust mingling in her bright blue eyes when she begs him, "Can you please just touch me?"  
  
He can't... he can't bear to see her suffering like this, and he can't think of a good reason not to. Just that, a touch, if it might ease her in some way. Slowly, he reaches down and wraps his hand around her foot.  _She's burning up_. Her toes splay out at the contact, her whole leg becoming rigid, and her breath when she exhales is more like sob.  
  
"Is that better?" He is unsure by her reaction whether he has only made it worse.  
  
"Yes, yes," she replies in a rush, "please don't let me go."  
  
It is uncomfortable to bend down so far, however. Careful to avoid unnecessary contact, he lowers himself to sit at the end of the bed and gently rubs up and down the top of her foot. She reacts as though he is rubbing between her thighs, back arching once more, thrusting her teats into even more prominence, pulling the fabric he has used to tie up her wrists taut. His own body reacts helplessly to the sight, blood pumping hard in his ears and in his breeches.  
  
His hand continues to stroke her foot while his mind is trying to force him to stand up – caught somewhere in the middle his body remains immobile. Sansa writhes in her sweat-soaked shift, raising one knee in convulsive pleasure. Automatically Sandor's eyes fall to her hemline, which has been pulled up to reveal her slender calf, and from his angle he can see far more than that. Gods, he can  _smell_  her scent, her arousal, her manifest desire for  _him_  – why in the seven hells is he just sitting here staring at her cunt instead of plunging his aching cock into it and giving her the fucking she's been begging for?  
  
 _Because in the morning, it will all be different._  The last three times she couldn't even bear to look at him – how much worse would it be if he loses his resolve now? She has trusted him to help her in this.  
  
And yet, this dark fever is burning her from the inside out. He can feel it where he touches her, feel it rolling off her. Might be she truly is in danger if he leaves her like this. And that goes against everything he has made of himself in these past few years.


	6. Chapter 6

Tentatively, he lets his fingers wander to her ankle, brushing the delicate bone before trailing higher. He tells himself this is for her sake, that anyone who loved her would do this now, but the insistent pressure against his laces will not let him believe it, and he is flooded with self-loathing, but it is not enough to make him stop.  
  
Sansa's chest is heaving at the contact, but she is watching him as well, eyes locked to his face. "I wish you would not look at me like that," she breathes.  
  
"Like what?" he grits out, hand slowly stroking up and around the skin of her shin and calf, feeling the soft hair that grows there and trying to keep his mind from wondering how different her maidenhair would feel.  
  
"As though you are just doing your–" she breaks off on a moan as he reaches the back of her knee, head falling back, "your duty."  
  
"What do you want from me?" he snarls, anger spiking hot and sudden. "Haven't I done everything you've asked of me? Aren't I doing that now?" Spurred on by the heady mix of his anger and his longing, he pushes his hand up roughly under her shift, rubbing a coarse line with his rough hand up the tender inside of her thigh, and presses down too harshly, palm flat against her apex. She cries out, legs falling sweetly apart as though he is touching her with any kind of finesse. She squeezes her eyes closed, overcome, and when he rubs her – a little more gently this time – she bucks up into his touch.  
  
He has never had this effect on a woman before – has never tried, in truth. He has only the vaguest idea of what to do, where to touch, but looking at her face he can see she is so sensitive by now that it hardly matters. That he can do this to her, make her feel such pleasure, is intoxicating.   
  
Here at her core he can feel how she burns, but her flesh is also slick with sweat and want. Shifting his position so that he can get a better angle, he brings his free hand up and gently parts her folds with his thumbs. She whines piteously, breaking into a sob as he carefully runs one forefinger down her slit, from the red curls on her mound to her pink little cunt. Her body here is a mystery of delicate folds of flesh, and though he has heard tell that something there will bring her to ecstasy, he cannot discern that she prefers his touch in any one place.  
  
"Yes," she moans, as he strokes her again, "yes, yes."  
  
It is hard to tell but he thinks she is close. Her muscles tremble with strain, her head thrown back, tendrils of sweat-darkened hair stuck to her face and neck. His own desire is at a fever pitch, and taking her distraction as an opportunity, he rubs himself urgently through his breeches with the heel of one hand. Almost as though she can sense what he is doing, she shudders in time with him as his balls tighten. The muscles in her cunt contract and she writhes, before releasing powerfully, crying out with every new wave. At the foot of her bed, Sandor burns at the sight of her, and comes in his breeches like a green squire.  
  
Stunned as though from a blow to the head, he just watches her for a moment. Sansa's eyelids raise and lower languidly a few times before she drifts away into non-sleep. He knows from experience that it will not last long, but it is enough to change his clothes and hide the evidence of his loss of control. She will be better off not knowing.


	7. Chapter 7

He doesn't know what to expect when she starts to stir once more. He has just had time to clean himself up with the wash cloth and change his soiled breeches before he hears the bedcovers rustle and she whispers, "Sandor..."  
  
His name on her lips spoken with such sweetness sends a shiver down his spine. He hopes what he has done is enough to cool her fire and sooth the awakening, and he hopes that it isn't, and he hates himself for that. Allowing his expression to settle into blankness, he turns to face her and goes to her bedside. Carefully, he reaches down to lay his hand across her forehead, but the way she purrs and turns hungrily into the touch tells him all he needs to know even before he can register the feel of her fevered skin.  
  
Their eyes lock. Febrile blue looks up at him, shining with moonlight and the snow-locked forest, a wild and untameable truth that perhaps has been buried within her all this time: he always liked to make the wolf in her show its teeth.  
  
In echo of his thoughts, Sansa's lips pull apart in something that is too predatory to be a smile. He feels held in that gaze, hunted, though she is the one tied up.  
  
"Take off your clothes," she murmurs, voice soft and throaty, though Sandor feels the force of her words like receiving the order to charge, the quivering energy of the full-bodied desire to obey.  
  
"No," he tells her.  
  
"Don't you want to have me?" she asks, still showing him her teeth. "Take off your clothes, Sandor."  
  
He clenches his fists together, feels the muscle ticking in his jaw. Too late he realises how close he is standing, her raised foot already sliding over his swelling cock. In the stillness between breaths, between heartbeats, he leans minutely into that strangest of caresses. Her eyes flick sharply to his face. In a moment she will see it all, and he will be destroyed.   
  
Time starts again, and he tears himself away. He does not want to look in her eyes and see that formidable talent for stratagem turned to piecing his weakness together, and so he takes her ankle and drags her legs apart, thrusts his mouth between her thighs to make her forget.  
  
She arches forcefully into him, eyes closed again, transported, and he hooks her knee over his shoulder, one hand on her hip to keep her in place. With his other hand he parts her lips to move aside the roughness of her hair, and licks a long, slow stripe across her cunt, up over the queer little folds of skin. She tastes like nothing else, strong and somehow pure, wet from the hours of denial. He has never done this before, thought it grotesque whenever mentioned, but the sweet grunts and moans she gives up now have made him hard and aching once more. He laps at her again, and finds his mouth is watering as though for a feast.  
  
Drawing back to lick his lips he takes a good look at her. This will likely be his last chance, and so why not? The desire rises in him to ask her what feels best, but it is unwelcome, exposing. Instead, he changes his grip and spreads her further, baring her fully to him. Leaning back in, he gently fastens his lips around the folds of skin within and rubs them with his tongue as he had done earlier with his finger. Her reaction is a low, keening whine, and she tightens the leg he has thrown over his shoulder as though to hold him in place.  
  
She is so soft between his lips, his instinct is to do everything gently, but when he attempts a delicate suction her hips buck and she tells him, "Harder."

Above this knot of flesh is another, smaller and slightly firmer against his lips. When he tickles her there with his tongue she cries out, and he feels the muscles of her inner thighs tighten in reflex. Suddenly consumed with the desire to feel it, Sandor moves the hand on her hip down to her arse and squeezes once with a flare of passion before lowering his hand and pressing his thumb into her trembling inner thigh. She is nearing again, squirming against him and heaving for breath, her sounds almost animalistic now. He continues to lick over her sensitive little nub as he strokes her in circles with his thumb. He doesn't know how easy it might be to break her maidenhead, and so he forces the strange drive to thrust something –  _anything_ , fingers, tongue – into her cunt, but as he feels her contract and shudder against his mouth, he cannot help but press his thumb into the strip of flesh between cunt and arsehole, rubbing her there as well.  
  
That is too much; or enough; or likely insufficient (only the morning will tell). She comes with a wordless howl of pleasure.  
  
When her body has stilled and she lies limply, catching her breath, Sandor closes his eyes and rests his forehead on her thigh. Softly, so that she will not feel it against the backdrop of sensation, he kisses her there. Then he lifts her leg back onto the bed and lowers the hem of her nightshift.  
  
She is watching him with eyes that are half-lidded in the aftermath of pleasure. It is painful to meet them.  
  
"I'm sorry, little bird," he mutters as he turns away. He retreats behind his meagre screen for at least the pretence of privacy, but is too sick to deal with himself, manhood softening as he unlaces his breeches. Instead he relieves himself into the chamber pot as an excuse to stay back there a little while longer.  
  
Yet through the shutters he can see the sky is starting to lighten. This long night is nearly over. It only remains to be seen where the shit has stuck, come the morning.


	8. Chapter 8

Behind a tapestry there is a hidden staircase that connects his room with Sansa's. Whether it was supposed to be for servants' access or as an escape route has been lost to the mists of time. Sansa had asked him to move in to the room after her second awakening, for ease of managing her condition, and as her sworn shield it had not been wholly inappropriate. Outwardly, at the least.   
  
As the sky lightens to deep blue Sansa finally falls into a dead sleep and Sandor unties her bonds and carries her limp form up the hidden staircase. He lays her in her own bed before leaving by the bedchamber's main door – his room reeks of her, and he does not want to go back there just now. Outside he takes a deep breath as he walks to the end of the corridor, clearing his lungs, before descending the main staircase to the bottom of the tower and unlocking the studded oak siege door to allow the servants to enter.  
  
Likely she will sleep late this morning and then bathe. Usually, she calls for him around midday to make her stiff and faltering apologies; usually he will stand as still as stone and accept it with as few words as possible. Today he cannot abide the thought of that mummer's farce. Though he is dog tired, Sandor heads straight for the training yard, and when his supply of willing opponents is exhausted, he saddles Stranger and rides out into the wolfswood.  
  
He is gone most of the day, and so he does not hear that the maester attended her until much later, as he is brushing Stranger down in the stables. He should swallow his pride and check on her, he thinks, mind wandering as his body runs through the familiar motions. He is her sworn shield after all. Perhaps she has finally confided in the bleating old goat they'd sent her from Oldtown. Perhaps he knows of a cure.  
  
Yesterday, Sandor might have felt relieved at the thought. Today, he has spent the whole day attempting to forget the sounds she made as she found her pleasure at his hands, and catching her taste every time he licked his lips. He wishes things to be easy between them again, to be rid of the perpetual shame and tension that her awakening has brought on them both. But the thought that she could stop needing him in this way is caged in despair.   
  
He doesn't know what he feels, only that he wants her more than ever.  
  
"She sent for you, m'lord," a timid stable boy explains as Sandor trudges fruitlessly through these thoughts. "She said to send you to her as soon as you returned."  
  
Sandor grunts in affirmation, but makes no hasty move, finishing off Stranger's gleaming black coat with the soft brush before tossing the hoof pick to the dithering boy and walking unhurriedly into the yard. He finds out from a passing maid that his lady has gone to the godswood.  
  
"With Lady Arya, if it please you," the maid adds. "She returned while you was gone, m'lord."  
  
The sun is turning a rich orange when he enters the godswood, hanging low and heavy on the horizon, and it is so evocative that he has to close his eyes against it for a moment, the rising tide of memory. It was here, on an evening just like this, that he had stood and watched Sansa at prayer, and realised with overwhelming helplessness that what he felt for her was love. He feels the same swooping, gnawing ache in his chest as he thinks on it now, the familiar scent of pine resin and the crunch of snow underfoot merely intensifying the moment. All these years of his life, and he has only ever loved one person. He has never known what to do with that knowledge.   
  
As he draws close to the small clearing with the heart tree, Sandor can hear the sound of voices. It’s Sansa and Arya, and they're arguing.


	9. Chapter 9

"I don't understand you." This is Arya, with her harder tone and the slight peasant cadence she never fully lost from her years in the wilderness. "Why are you making it so difficult for yourself?"  
  
"Of course you don't understand." Sansa, voice uncharacteristically strained. "You do as you please with no regard for propriety."  
  
Sandor leans into the trunk of an old ironwood, hidden from view by branches of sentinel pine, and watches the sisters in the heart tree clearing.  
  
"Propriety?" The wolf-bitch spits into the snow. "Why do you still care about those stupid-?"  
  
"I am the lady of this castle, and Warden of the North," Sansa interrupts, voice low but angry. "Those stupid rules that you eschew could cause me to lose my position, my power over my bannermen. After everything we've fought for, how would you like for me to be brought down?"  
  
Sandor is unsurprised by the subject matter, but it is still difficult to hear her speak of it in such terms. Some noble women take lovers, it is true – those who are secure enough in their position to withstand society's scorn. Before, he had faintly hoped she might one day find the risk worth it. To hear it confirmed that she never will is bitter indeed.  
  
" _Sansa_ ," Arya hisses in irritation, "gods damn it! It's not like anyone would need to know. I hate the very sight of Clegane, but even I could tell you he's loyal."  
  
Sansa, who is standing by the heart tree with Jonquil at her side watching her sister pace and gesticulate, tightens her shawl about her shoulders, eyes flashing. Now Sandor is looking at her properly, he notices how gaunt she is, the skin of her face drawn tight across her bones, eyes shadowed. She has sometimes referred to her awakening as an illness, but it is only now that Sandor truly sees why. She looks frail and sick, shocking in contrast to how he last saw her, and even his dark amusement at  _Lady_  Arya's harsh honesty drains out of him.  
  
Nymeria approaches the women, slinking from the long shadows on the opposite side of the clearing, and Arya seems to calm a little.  
  
"Listen," she says placatingly, "I know... I know he's as ugly as a demon, I know you like your men even prettier than you are, but it's just the one time, isn't it? Why don't you just fuck him and have done, and next month you will finally be able to move on to someone nicer."  
  
 _How generous of the wolf bitch to advocate for me,_  he thinks sourly.  
  
"Nicer?" Sansa's laugh has a hysterical edge to it.  
  
"Yes,  _nicer_ ," Arya retorts, hackles rising again, "it wouldn't be hard! Or keep to one man if that's easier to hide from your bannermen. Whatever you want. But believe me, whether or not the bloody servants gossip, you can't avoid this, Sansa. Even the maester said so."  
  
"The servants already gossip."  
  
The words are spoken so quietly that Arya doesn't hear them over her own raging.  
  
"What?"  
  
Sansa's mouth tightens. "I said, the servants already gossip. Really, why wouldn't they, when their lady locks herself in her tower once every month with only her sworn shield for company?"  
  
"Then why...?"  
  
He realises he is holding his breath, the better to hear her answer.

Sansa shakes her head and looks away. "We are different, sweet sister, as different as the sun and the moon."  
  
Arya stops her pacing and stares at Sansa. "Father once told me that, too. But the same blood runs in our veins."  
  
"And yet, this... thing, this  _awakening_ , we experience it differently. I cannot...  _be_  as you are, with no regard for..." She cannot finish, voice choked, and there is a long pause.  
  
Arya takes a step toward her. "What are you saying?"  
  
They gaze at each other for the length of several heartbeats, before Sansa makes a small, helpless gesture, and Arya breathes, "No."  
  
Frowning, Sandor's mind works frantically. They seem to be talking in some private, sisterly language, and it is suddenly infuriating to be left in the dark, just at this moment.  
  
"Yes," Sansa murmurs back. "Since long before the change. Do you understand now?"  
  
 _Understand what?_  Sandor near growls in frustration.  
  
"No," Arya repeats, voice hard once more. "That's nothing but childish stories. I thought you knew better by now."  
  
"Are you no longer capable of human feeling, sister?"  
  
Arya freezes, her expression devastated. "Does he know you're ready to die for him? Will he let you sacrifice yourself over – what? His pride?  _He_  is more of an animal that I will ever be," she yells before spinning on her heel, long strides taking her quickly out of sight, and Sandor realises he is gripping the hilt of his sword, tight-fisted.  
  
When she is gone, Sansa raises a shaky hand to her forehead before sinking down onto a large weirwood root. For a long moment she stares sightlessly at the pool in the centre of the clearing, its surface kept unfrozen by the hot springs that feed it, as Sandor tries to decipher what in the seven hells he has just heard.  
  
Then, without looking up, she calls weakly, "You can come out now, Sandor."


	10. Chapter 10

_That damned wolf_ , he thinks as he emerges from the tree line. It's impossible that Sansa could have seen him, but Jonquil's senses are stronger. The depth of their bond is surely beyond anything nature intended,  _just like her monthly fixation on me._  
  
"Were you listening long?" she asks when he comes to stand at her side. He searches for an accusation in her words, but hears only tiredness.  
  
"Do you find me discourteous, little bird?" he asks in return, softer than he meant it.  
  
She huffs a laugh, humourless. It is over quickly, and she rubs her forehead again, squinting distractedly against the reflection of the setting sun on the pool's still waters.  _Still waters run deep_ , he thinks, watching Sansa warily.  
  
He half expects the usual apology, but this is not the usual setting, and she is so quiet as to be unnerving. Beside her, the wolf sits on her hind legs, tail wrapped neatly around her, watching him with piercing golden eyes, and he wonders not for the first time what, exactly, she’s been mating with, given the shortage of direwolves south of the wall.  
  
"What did she mean, about the maester?" he says eventually.  
  
"What?" Sansa asks, craning to look up at him.  
  
"Arya. _Even the maester said so_."  
  
What little colour there is drains from her face until she is deathly pale. "I called for him this morning, once I woke," she says quietly. "After last night, I did not feel I could avoid it any longer." Despite it all, at her words Sandor feels his heart sink and his anger surge. He can feel his mouth twitching as she continues. "I described to him my state. Not... not about Jonquil, but the fever, the sweating fits, the looseness of my dresses. He said if I continue on as I have-" her voice cuts away, throat clicking from dryness as she tries to swallow. Frowning, Sandor notices a bead of glistening red dripping from her nose. Crouching before her he dabs at it, a strange echo of a long-ago gesture, and Sansa's breath hitches sharply at the touch of his skin. She leans into his hand with a kind of thoughtless, animal grace that sends a bolt of desire through him, before her eyes snap open and she sits back sharply.  
  
"You're still feeling it," he says, gut tensing uneasily. Closer now, he can feel how hot she still is; when he'd touched her, her skin had been clammy with sweat. Previously it has only lasted for a single night in each turn of the moon, never more than that. He doesn't know what it means, but looking into frightened blue eyes, he knows it can't be anything good.

The thought crosses Sandor's mind that he could leave, but he does not doubt that she would try to follow him. Eventually, she would.  
  
"Maester Heldon said that if my fever continues to return, if it no longer abates from one month to the next, it will burn me away from the inside out, until there is nothing left." He stares at her, uncomprehending, unable to make the words fit into any kind of meaning. "May I touch you?" she asks wretchedly, "Only my head is pounding so."  
  
Silently he nods, and she reaches out haltingly to take his hand. The shock of the contact is greater than it has any right to be, but beyond that he finds himself entranced by the expression of pained bliss on his lady's face. It is the first time  _she_  has touched  _him_  since her first awakening, and he is agonisingly aware of that fact.   
  
"Thank you," she breathes, eyes closed, pushing her fingers through his until they are entwined.

"You aren't angry about last night, then?" he rasps after a moment, fighting the swelling warmth inside. This isn't for him, not really.  
  
Sansa looks as though she is about to cry from mortification. "At you?" she replies hoarsely. "How could I be? Sandor, truly, I have never felt so overpowered by something so wholly beyond my control. Even in King's Landing when we both belonged to the Lannisters, even then it was not as bad as this, because at least I could count on my own body not to betray me." She is weeping now, chin tucked in against the sobs and the shame, and he doesn't know what to do.  
  
"I could kill the wolf," he growls. "Do what I should have done years ago."  
  
Behind Sansa's shoulder, Jonquil growls right back, ears pricked forward in threat.   
  
"No!" Sansa gasps, tightening her grip on him as tears fall from her chin. "Please, I couldn't bear it, not again. It isn't her fault, Sandor."  
  
"It's entirely her fault, woman! Do you think you would be in this state if she had perished along with her littermates?"  
  
"No, you don't  _understand_ ," she says, and Sandor has had enough, because that is the third time he has heard her say that since last night – once to Arya, and now twice to him. Standing, he wrenches his hand from hers, making her groan at the sudden loss of contact.   
  
"Then why don't you bloody well tell me?" he snarls down at her. She shrinks from him reflexively, then takes a couple of steadying breaths and wipes her eyes. When she stands to face him, her shoulders are back and chin raised – the regal bearing he is so familiar with.  _Finally, here it comes,_  he thinks harshly. _But there's no need to explain yourself to me, little bird, I've known it all along. I'm not comely enough, or gallant enough, or high enough for you to contemplate. You trust me to keep you safe, yes, have even learned to appreciate my council, but I'm still a horror to you, too ugly to ever_ choose _to mate with, too low born to ever sacrifice your precious propriety over._  
  
He can see her resolve waver as she catches sight of his expression. Irrational hope that she will remain silent stabs at his heart. She tightens her shawl about her shoulders, for a moment looking painfully fragile, before meeting his eye and speaking.  
  
"Arya got it wrong earlier, it is not your pride but mine," she says, clearly forcing the words out. "I know –  _have known_  since the first time – that you don't want this. I know that my behaviour repulses you, that the thought of a lordship is abhorrent to you, but could there be no chance..." Her voice shakes. Sandor is dumbstruck. "Things were not so very bad between us, before. Could there be no chance that you could come to love me? I would do anything for you, Sandor. I don't want to die, and I love you, and it just seems so  _stupid_  to-"  
  
"Stop talking," he growls, grabbing hold of her shoulders, ready to shake her for what she's doing to him. "How could you be so –  _stop talking_."  
  
Confused blue eyes catch his for a moment, before he snatches her face in his hands and kisses her brutally.


	11. Chapter 11

Sansa's body melts into his as she opens her mouth to deepen the kiss, arms tight around his back, hands clenched in his jerkin, and he has never, ever felt anything like it. In this moment it would be so easy to believe that the gods had made them to fit together, but it's a raw thought, still too tender to probe. Instead he focuses on the feel of her skin under his hands, the overwhelming heat of her tongue in his mouth.  
  
She is shivering, but not from cold, blood pounding in her neck, reacting to every tiny exploration of his fingers with a soft, desperate sound against his lips. He breaks away to taste her skin, pressing sordid, open-mouthed kisses down her cheek and jaw to the feather-soft skin of her neck.   
  
Her mouth by the stump of his ear, he can hear every small gasp and feel every hot exhalation of breath, bringing his own skin into tingling gooseflesh.  
  
"Thank you," she whispers, over and over again, "thank you, thank you," as fresh tears of relief appear on her cheeks. She practically nuzzles against him, rubbing her smooth skin against his scarred cheek before arching her neck as he makes his way down to her throat. The motion pushes her hips even tighter against him, and he lets his hands fall to her perfect arse to grind her against him the way he wants.  
  
"I'm not like to make it back to the castle if we keep this up," he rasps, tonguing the dip at the base of her throat.   
  
"I don't care, I don't care," she gasps, "please, I need this."  
  
That's all the encouragement Sandor needs. Growling, he rips off his cloak and picks her up, shoving her against the weirwood's trunk and rubbing himself in slow, hard thrusts against her crotch. Sansa cries out and scrambles to drag her skirts out of the way, fumbling frantically with the tie of her smallclothes. Not prepared to wait, Sandor takes his dirk to them, and then to her bodice as well, burying his face in her teats as he continues to thrust. It’s undignified, but nothing about their situation has ever held any dignity.  
  
Distantly he hears Jonquil padding away in the direction he has just come from. He had all but forgotten the uncanny creature, but her presence alone will be sufficient to keep anyone away from the trail leading to their clearing.  
  
 _Not that it matters if anyone comes,_  he thinks wildly.  _She said she loved me, let them all find out._  
  
An image crosses his mind for one fleeting moment, of fucking her on the table of the Great Hall, claiming her publicly at some feast or gathering as she writhes beneath him and moans his name. The surge of heat it sends through his body is near enough to finish him.  
  
"Damn you, Sansa, tell me you want it," he rasps into the beautiful soft curves of her teats. Her hands dig painfully into the skin of his shoulders, buried somehow inside the neck of his jerkin, her nails biting in so hard she is like to leave marks. He imagines having to explain them in front of the other men in the bathhouse, and near spills again.  
  
"I'm not sure I could wait any longer," she pants as he fights with his own laces, too far gone to be reproving but Sandor takes the point nonetheless.  
  
His placket is soaked through with her wetness, his fingers slipping, and he ends up snapping his laces in frustration. His cock is leaking freely, twitching at the touch of his own hand as he draws himself out and guides the head to her cunt. She moans at the feel of him down there, and he spares a brief thought for taking her maidenhood gently, but they are so far passed that now that he doesn't think she will even feel it.  
  
She's tight though, untested, and as burning hot as he remembers. He fucks into her shallowly at first, as much for his own sanity as for her comfort, but she bucks against him, forcing him deeper, and bloody _wails_ at the sensation.  
  
"Is that enough?" he groans as he plunges into her, skin slapping against skin as he takes her hard. "Is it done, now? Seven hells, little bird, tell me if you're safe, I need to pull out."

" _No,_ " she snarls, and he looks up to find her eyes flashing with animal rage. "I am not your whore. You'll give me your seed." She bends to kiss him harshly, biting at his lips, and at the taste of his own blood his release bears down on him like the thundering of hooves in the vanguard. He thrusts again and again as the pleasure is wrung out of him, and Sansa's climax crests and comes crashing down with his own.  
  
His knee buckles and he fights to stay upright, staggering a little before letting Sansa down. Then he gives in to the call of the ground, sliding down the tree trunk and pulling Sansa on top of him as he does so in a heated tangle of limbs.   
  
"Oh," she murmurs, taking a long, deep breath before seeming to sink into him. "That was..."  
  
He grunts in agreement, pulling her closer to cradle her possessively against his chest, so precious. She buries her nose against his throat and breathes deep again, and like that, Sandor rests in unfamiliar contentment.

It can’t last. Spring it may be, but the ground remains frozen and their clothes are in tatters. Sansa moves first, rising from his lap with silent grace, the rustling of her skirts indistinguishable from the wind through the tops of the trees. He looks up at her, stretching sinuously with her arms above her head in unselfconscious glory, and even her tangled hair and ruined clothing cannot diminish her beauty. Bending, she draws up her skirts and rolls down her stockings, her fine doe-skin boots lost earlier to their frenzy. And there she stands, barefoot in the snow with her bodice gaping open and falling off her shoulders, a dark red mark on one of her teats from his mouth and unshaven jaw, and it strikes him that if the old gods exist they might well look like this.

She is not looking at him, though. He feels caught between warring impulses, to stand and force her eyes to his; to sit and let this moment of unrefined beauty stretch as long as it will. Certainty is fading, however, doubt creeping in. She said she loved him, and he so eager for a reason to relent… now that his blood is cooling, it is somehow hard to believe. How much of what she said is the wolf’s damned curse, and how much comes truly from her heart? _What does it matter, if her health is saved?_ And looking at her now it is immediately clear – her health _is_ saved. Her skin seems to glow in the fading light, radiant, the shadows gone from her eyes.

Turning her back on him, Sansa walks slowly to the edge of the god’s pool, her actions slow and dreamy, as though her head is somewhere far away. _Running with her wolf, no doubt_. He snorts softly to himself. Damn him for a fool, for wanting anything more.

And yet… there have been many times when she has shown her weakness only to him. Other times, her temper. Could it be there is a reason for this? How many other facets of herself might she hold for him alone? A distant part of his mind finds it amazing that he could know her for so long, and understand her so little, but he accepts that this is more than likely the reason he has craved her all this time.

These thoughts are forgotten as Sansa shrugs away her ragged bodice and pushes down her skirts, standing naked as her name day, her long tumble of hair not quite enough to hide the curve of her arse. Then she slips smoothly into the water until she is up to her waist, hair floating behind her like a train.

He feels himself stirring again at the sight, but it is the way she looks at him over her shoulder that draws him after her.


	12. Chapter 12

The water isn’t hot like the springs that feed the bathhouse, but body-warm, and it feels good to rinse the grit of dried sweat from his skin as he wades in after her. The pool is deep and the bed falls away quickly, but Sandor was brought up near the sea and knows how to swim better than most. Ducking beneath the surface he scrubs a hand over his face, and when he comes back up Sansa is nearby, floating on her back with her eyes closed.

“Little bird,” he starts, but doesn’t know how to continue. A small smile creeps into the corner of her mouth, though, and something in him eases. “Look at me,” he asks, and she does, allowing her legs to sink so that she is treading water before him, body a pale blur in the dark water.

Stretching out his legs Sandor finds he can stand, just. Reaching for Sansa, he pulls her closer until her arms go around his neck and her teats push firmly against his chest. She does not resist, though there is tension in her back, legs held straight under the water instead of folding around his waist. He sees the moment she notices his half hard cock against her thigh because her eyes slide away in sudden shyness.

“No, look at me,” he repeats, reluctantly raising one hand from her smooth waist to tip up her chin. “Tell me what all this means.”

Despite having fucked her and fingered her and put his face between her legs, this moment feels by far the most intimate. The sky is almost dark now but the snow provides an eerie glow that is enough to see her by. He is drowning in her eyes.

“What it means?” she asks quietly. “Gods be good, Sandor, _which part_?”

“Is this it?” he asks, voice hoarse. “Will you do as Arya said, fuck me and move on?”

Her face shatters. “No,” she breathes. “I would never. You know I would never.”

“Do I?”

She stares at him, bewildered, gaze flitting back and forth between his eyes. “I offered you marriage. Don’t you understand what that-”

“ _Marriage_?” he splutters. “Piss on that, I thought you were offering me your cunt!”

“Don’t be coarse, Sandor, please, not now. After what you’ve just seen, do you honestly think I could ever let you go? Do you think any husband of mine would ever be able to stop me hunting you out when the time came, month after month? I would never have chosen this particular path, but it is what it is. You are mine, and I would marry you.”

Sandor finds himself speechless. _Marriage_. After all the tens of suitors she has turned down, she would choose him? Abruptly he remembers her words about a lordship, incomprehensible at the time.

“I love you,” she adds quietly, and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end to hear it a second time.

“Which part of you is speaking, Sansa? The woman or the wolf?”

“Is it so very hard to hear, that you must question it?” She slides one arm from around his neck until her hand rests over his heart, and it is only then that he feels how his chest is heaving. “I love you. I have for a long time. All that has happened these last few months is that my hand has finally been forced.”

“And your bannermen?” he rasps, barely able to get the words out. “They won’t just sit back and take it, I’ll warrant.”

She shakes her head. “I only ever meant to play the game with them until my rule was secure and I could turn to you. But the heart wants what it wants, Sandor. Nothing else matters now.”

“I will hurt you. You hear me? The gods never meant for filth like me to marry pretty little birds like you.”

She smiles and touches her breast where he left his mark. “I won’t break. You of all people should know I am stronger than I look.”

He gazes at her, stunned by the gifts that have landed unasked in his lap. “Seven bloody hells, how could you ever have thought I didn’t want you, woman?”

Her smile turns shy again, and Sandor’s heart thumps painfully. “You didn’t give me much hope. I never conceived of you as gallant.” She pauses, toying maddeningly with the black hair on this chest. “ _Do_ you love me? You never said.”

He has never been a craven, but she scares the piss out of him. There is a queer comfort in knowing she is bound to him now, though. Whatever ill judgements or wrong steps he may make, she will always come back to him. She won’t have a choice. “Yes,” he rasps, stomach roiling. “I love you.”

She embraces him so hard he can’t breathe for a moment, arms around his neck and face buried behind his ear. He doesn’t care. He’ll die like this if it comes to it, because he’ll die happy.

“Bloody hells,” he breathes. “Bloody hells.”

The kiss, when it comes, is soft as the feel of her breath on his skin. She cups his cheeks with both her palms and touches her lips lightly to his with aching sweetness.

“You’re shaking,” she whispers against his mouth, finally drawing her legs up around his hips. “Do I frighten you so much?”

Sandor groans, closing his eyes as she strokes his face with gentle fingertips. How long ago was that now, that journey down the kingsroad? How many years has he spent thirsting for her notice?

“Others take me,” he mutters back, “you frighten me to death.”

They kiss in the water until the moonless sky is bright with a blanket of stars. Desire still warms his blood, but he did not sleep last night and grey fatigue is starting to catch up with him. Sansa, too, moves against him with longing but no urgency, and in the end they are forced to decide to get out and return to the Great Keep or sleep right there in the pool.

Their clothes are ruined, though. Sansa’s he expected, and drapes her in his heavy cloak, but he had not realised how dire his own were. The neck of his jerkin is ripped and hanging down his chest, the laces on his breeches completely unsalvageable so that he is forced to hold them up by hand as they walk back to the castle. He feels a smirk pulling at his lips every time a servant glances at Sansa’s wet hair or his state of undress, but even more so at the little bird’s ramrod straight back and the pretty pink stain in her cheeks.

They sleep together in Sansa’s bed. He has never slept with a woman before, but his exhaustion buzzes persistently in his ears by the time they reach her chamber, and he finds it is really very simple to collapse onto the featherbed and pull her flush against him.

He sleeps deeply, a simple, black sleep, from which he does not awake for many hours.


	13. Chapter 13

The sun is already high in the sky when Sandor stumbles from bed in search of the chamber pot. Disorientated from sleep, it takes him a moment to remember whose chamber this is, and that there is no pot but an absurdly spacious garderobe, complete with washstand and linen towels to pat his hands and face dry. When he re-emerges, it is to find Sansa sitting by the open window in a loosely tied over-robe, a platter of food spread out across her small reading table and a slightly taken aback expression on her face.

Abruptly self-conscious about his half-dressed state, Sandor hoists his breeches higher on his hips and looks around for the rest of his clothes.

“When did that arrive?” he asks cautiously, nodding at the food.

“While you slept.”

Sandor pauses. “The bed curtains weren’t drawn when I woke.”

She smiles, lowering her eyes and blushing prettily. “Bessie was a little surprised, it’s true.”

_So that’s the way of it, is it?_ Let the servants see him in her bed, and now he has no choice but to marry her, or else single-handedly bring down her reputation for good. He snorts, half in amusement, half in recognition – his little bird is not above manipulating every soul in this castle to secure him to her side as she is already secured to his. She still doesn’t believe she doesn’t have to. But he has never felt the strange sensation of being desirable before, and so he lets it pass without comment.

Leaving his jerkin he joins her at the table unshod and bare chested. He is suddenly starving and reaches hungrily for the fresh black bread, still steaming hot in the middle, while Sansa pours him a horn of something and sneaks glances at his body when she thinks he isn’t looking.

He cannot help but grin to himself. The fever has finally left her and she is fully returned to her senses, courteous and clearly abashed despite her early morning scheming.

“I can take them off if you want a better look,” he offers with his mouth still full of bread. “The breeches,” he adds, when she looks about to feign ignorance.

“My pardons, I didn’t mean to offend,” she says, a deep pink flush creeping across her face and neck. Sandor is caught by the desire to see how far down it extends.

Wolfing down another mouthful, he quickly stands and before Sansa can even draw breath to voice her protest he has scooped her up and dumped her back on the rumpled bed.

“What are you doing?” she peeps as he climbs on top of her, straddling her hips as he loosens the cord of her over-robe and pushes it back. She is naked as her nameday beneath, as he had hoped, his actions revealing her teats and belly.

“Admiring my woman,” he replies. “You wanted me, Sansa. You should know I’m no tame husband, who’ll stand and wait at your bedchamber door while you brush your hair a hundred times and kneel at your bed to say your prayers. And what a pretty sight you make, little bird, with your soft teats and my marks on your skin. Show me a man who hasn’t thought about you naked in his bed and I’ll show you a eunuch.”

“Mother have mercy,” Sansa chokes as he bends down to satisfy his urge to suckle on her rose pink nipples, somewhere between embarrassment and mirth. “And I thought never to hear such sweet words of love pass your lips.”

“I’ll sing a hymn to your cunt,” he mutters, laving the tight bud with his tongue and glorying in the way she wriggles beneath him.

“I’d rather you do something else to… to it,” she replies, one tentative hand finding its way to his cock and stroking with a maddeningly light touch.

Well now, who is he to refuse the Lady of Winterfell?

He takes his time, letting himself explore her, holding nothing back. The need no longer on her, she is not so finely tuned to his slightest touch, but still sweetly responsive, sighing as he slides his fingers between her legs, stroking his back, his hair, his scarred face. She trembles as he enters her, pushing in as slow as he can bear, and holds him close as he moves on top of her, staring at his face with an expression of such fondness it makes him ache.

He tries to make it last, make it as good for her as it had been yesterday, but she is too beautiful, too appealing, too _much_. He pulls out at the last moment and spills on her belly. Sansa makes a little noise of complaint.

It was habit that made him do it, but at her disappointed look he is reminded all over again with a sense of incredulity that they are to be wed, and that it is the right of a husband to spend himself inside his wife. _But we are not married yet, and may not be for some months._

“Are you so desperate for me to put a babe in your belly?” he asks, mouthing the skin of her neck as he recovers. It is meant as a pointed remark, to remind her of the consequences, though it brings to mind the thought of her big with his child, a thought that thrills him and terrifies him in equal measure.

“No,” she responds reluctantly, her tone suggesting it may not be her true answer, but for now he takes it for what it is, and with a certain measure of relief. “I only meant to signify that… Only that… I did not want you to stop.”

A low, rumbling chuckle escapes his lips as he takes her meaning. “The little bird is unsatisfied,” he mocks, gently biting her earlobe. “I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy now you’re no longer begging me for my cock. Well, don’t fret, woman. I’m nowhere near finished with you.”

As he works his way down her body, trailing kisses on her sweat-slicked skin, he has a moment of sudden clarity. He will spend the rest of his life learning how to please her, and he will be glad of it.

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Other things are not of consequence  
> the Heart wants what it wants.  
> I like to have you know some care  
> so when your life gets faint for its other life  
> you can lean on me   
> I won’t break, love.   
> I look very small   
> but the reed can carry weight.   
> _– Emily Dickinson_


End file.
